One of the questions most often asked by my consulting clients is, "Where do I get new Accounts?" As an owner or sales manager, I'm sure you hear the same question from your sales staff. Part of the unstated background of the question is that most of us hate to prospect and, as a result, do a poor job of creating new business on our own. If you read this column regularly, you know I personally find cold-calling uncomfortable, and over the years I've developed tools to warm up those prospects by marketing to them in clever ways.

If your business operates with employee salespeople rather than independent contractors, you can help them find new accounts and ease the pain of cold-call prospecting by exploring new ways of developing business.

Squeeze The Top Five
We often overlook the most obvious sources of new customers -- our satisfied, existing clients.

Recently, with a group of 12 distributor owners who meet with me on a quarterly basis for business development coaching, I challenged everyone by asking each to make a list of their top five clients, then tell me if they had all of the business available from them. One of the most outspoken members of the group assured us he had all of his top accounts' business, and that he knew everyone in the client companies who had budgets to spend on promotional products. Several other group members felt the same way.

I challenged them again to create a list before our next meeting, of five people at each of their top five client companies who didn't currently purchase from them and who had budgets for promotional products. The results amazed them.

Our most vocal participant, who told us he had all the business available from his top five, reported that at his largest client, he discovered 15 subsidiary companies that had offices in the same building. Each had promotional budgets. He told us that after discovering these subsidiaries, he believed he would write as much new business as he currently had with his original contacts.

Try the exercise. Your salespeople may tell you they have all of the business with their top five customers. Ask them to identify five new contacts, and help them prepare an introduction. Our current clients are often our best source of new business.

Referrals For Certificates
One tool you might develop is a referral campaign. Rather than depend on an informal process of asking clients for referrals within their own firms and from other outside associates , consider a formal referral campaign for all your clients and prospects.

We've seen a number of these work very successfully. One distributor offers gift certificates for referrals. Several others are currently gaining referrals in a similar manner. To prevent the appearance of impropriety, one distributor specifies the referral contact should be for contacts in other companies, and not in the same office of the client.

People often suggest using promotional products as gifts for referrals. You may want to consider this, but keep in mind that your clients may feel the value of the gift is less because you buy them from your suppliers at cost. Gift certificates eliminate this concern. If you use gift certificates, try to get them from stores that reflect the aspirations of your clients. Many different types of retailers offer them and you can find them to fit any market.

Other advantages: You don't have to buy them until they've been earned. You don't even have to purchase them to photograph them for promotional purposes, because most retailers offer images on the Internet. Some of the less obvious and more upscale gift-certificate choices are the Metropolitan Museum (www.metmuseum.org/store), Saks Fifth Avenue ( www.saksfifthavenue.com/giftcertificates ) or Tiffany ( www.tiffany.com/shopping/item_gc.asp ).

You can control the amount of the incentive. You may decide you want referrals for a minimum of $1,000, and you're prepared to spend 2% on the gift. In this case, you may wish to give movie tickets for a $1,000 order from a new referral account, a $50 gift certificate for a $2,500 new referral account, etc.

The best campaigns I've seen recently were offered in a mailing with pictures of the certificates and a letter from the owner/sales manager outlining the program. Additional promo sheets are given to all salespeople, inserted with all correspondence to clients and prospects and posted on your Web site.

The 30-Second Commercial
Don't forget the power of networking. Join your local chamber of commerce and attend its meetings. Seek opportunities to serve your community. Meet key businesspeople in your market, and exchange business cards with every businessperson you meet. Develop a "30-second commercial" about your firm; the idea is to be able to tell anyone about your business and services within 30 seconds so that you clearly and concisely deliver the message you want to deliver any time you have the opportunity. The best commercials tell your audience four things.

•  Who I am

•  What I do

•  What I do better than my competitors

•  Why we should do business together

After you write your commercial, rehearse it and present it to several different groups. Get someone to time you. Re-write it and re-write it again until it becomes second nature to use it at every opportunity. Then repeat the exercise with your sales team. It works.

My personal favorite prospecting tool is something I call niche market prospecting. You may have participated in a workshop with me or read about the process in The Counselor. The last article I wrote on it appeared in the October 2001 issue. It detailed a process of marketing your company to a small, select, targeted group of clients in an innovative way. Its primary purpose is to warm up cold calls, create a desire on the part of the prospect to meet with your salespeople and present your company in a manner that shows your creativity.

In the article, I detailed the process and talked about the results you might expect. Many distributors have used niche market prospecting to build their business. The success rate of these campaigns is very high; in many cases, over 85% of prospects are turned into clients. If you don't have your back copies and want to read the entire article, go to www.promoschool.com , look on the right side under Counselor Articles and scroll down to October 2001.

Barry Hults is an educator, lecturer and consultant in the promotional marketing industry. He's the former owner of a Counselor Multi-Million Dollar distributorship, the founder of the School for Promotional Marketing Inc. and president of Hults Consultants Ltd. E-mail him at: barryhults@promoschool.com , visit his Web site at www.promoschool.com or call him at (888) 475-4229.